It's axiomatic, the idea that we can't change the past. Then again, we don't have the power of the Louisiana Supreme Court. If its justices block the ascension of Justice Bernette Johnson to the court's top seat, they'll not only have changed what seemed to be Johnson's certain future; but they'll have also reached back into history and unbestowed Johnson's predecessor of the honor he's due.

CHRIS GRANGER / THE TIMES-PICAYUNEAttorney General Eric Holder, Jr., was the keynote speaker at Dillard University on Thursday, November 11, 2010, for the dedication of the Revius O. Ortique, Jr., Public Affairs Lecture on Law and Society. The event was held in the Professional Schools and Sciences Building on the Dillard campus in New Orleans. Family of the late Ortique share a laugh as they reminisce about him.

That predecessor is Revius Ortique, who, till this point, has been celebrated as the first black person on the Louisiana Supreme Court. But if it's somehow decided that Johnson isn't next in line to be the court's chief justice, the first black chief justice in the state's history, then it must also be the case that Ortique wasn't the pioneer we've been made to believe he was. If Johnson isn't entitled to be chief justice, Ortique wasn't a justice at all.

This is how it's supposed to work: The Supreme Court justice with the longest tenure sits in the big chair. Catherine "Kitty" Kimball occupies that seat now, but she's announced her plan to retire in January. Johnson has been serving as justice since 1994, which puts her ahead of Jeffrey Victory who was elected the next year.

But it's Victory's contention that Johnson's first six years on the court don't count, that during that time she wasn't a member of the state's highest court but a member of the state's Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal.

That's a true statement dishonestly employed. Yes, Johnson was technically elected to the appellate court, but as Victory and everybody else knows, the appellate court isn't where she served. Ever.

In a lawsuit originally filed in 1986, black voters in New Orleans rightly complained that the Supreme Court districts had been drawn in such a way that it was unlikely a black candidate would ever be elected. They said the configuration of those districts constituted a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs, and the state of Louisiana eventually agreed to give Orleans Parish its own district beginning in 2000. But between 1992 and 2000, voters in Orleans would get to send a justice to the Supreme Court by way of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal. The person elected to that position would vote as one of eight members of the state's highest court.

In short: Johnson took the Fourth Circuit Court route in 1994 because it was then a black candidate's only realistic entree onto the state Supreme Court. She was elected in the newly formed Supreme Court district in 2000. Victory is now attempting to use Johnson's initial path to the court against her and retroactively capitalize on the unfair system that made her direct election to the court all but impossible.

But you can't dismiss Johnson's service without dismissing the service of the pioneer who served between 1992 and 1994. You can't say that she wasn't on the Supreme Court between 1994 and 2000 without essentially tearing down the portrait of Ortique that was installed at the Supreme Court five years ago. You can't upend Johnson's future without doing great harm to the state's history books.

"This is a slap in the face, and I am very upset about it," Ortique's daughter, Rhesa Ortique McDonald, said Friday. She said she was stunned by Justice Victory's "audacity" in dismissing Johnson's first six years on the court. "I know my dad would be very upset about this, too," she said. "I can't believe in 2012 we're still fighting for our rights. I think it's so disrespectful."

According to a memorandum filed in federal court last week, Victory isn't the only justice that Johnson has reason to view with suspicion. The court filing, asking that the original 1986 case be reopened, adds as defendants Johnson's six colleagues on the court: Kimball, Victory, Greg Guidry, Jeannette Knoll, Marcus Clark and John Weimer. The filing alleges that those six convened without Johnson to discuss how the next chief justice might be chosen.

It's Johnson's position, of course, that no choosing is necessary: She's second in line only to Kimball. So when Kimball departs, she's the next one up.

As last week's memorandum puts it, "Neither the plaintiffs, nor the intervenor the United States of America, would have ever accepted a Louisiana Supreme Court Justice in the majority African American district that was in any way at all somehow less than the other Justices."

But that's what Victory's argument implies: that, for an eight-year stretch, the state Supreme Court maintained a seat for a second-class justice. That insults more than just the two justices who occupied that seat, but the seekers of justice who helped send them there.